Columbus schools to use online test to screen teaching candidates

Like an Internet dating site that promises a scientific approach to finding singles the perfect match, a company says it can hook up Columbus schools with the best applicants for teaching jobs.

Bill Bush, The Columbus Dispatch

Like an Internet dating site that promises a scientific approach to finding singles the perfect match, a company says it can hook up Columbus schools with the best applicants for teaching jobs.

The school board approved a contract this month with TeacherMatch, which promises that its screening test can predict “with scientific precision” whether an applicant will help improve student achievement, according to information provided by the district.

“Can you predict a teacher candidate performance? Yes,” says a presentation prepared by the Chicago-based company. The program is “the first and only comprehensive tool that predicts the impact that teachers will have on student achievement.”

The district will begin using the program in the coming weeks, at an initial cost of up to $127,000 for the first year. Anyone applying for a teaching position first will be automatically directed to the TeacherMatch website to take a 90-minute multiple-choice test.

The district’s personnel office will receive candidates’ scores and use those results to help determine the top candidates to be interviewed, said Deputy Superintendent John Stanford.

“It will not determine solely whether a person is hired to be a teacher or principal in the district,” Stanford said. “It will enhance our ability to screen candidates.”

The program will give district officials a better understanding of not only teaching skills but also a candidate’s “motivation and attitude,” Stanford said.

No one could be reached at TeacherMatch, but the company’s literature says that hundreds of studies show that a teacher’s success hinges on four attributes: teaching skills, qualifications, cognitive ability and factors such as having persistence and a positive attitude. The test tries to gauge those.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina have used the program since the start of this school year, and its effectiveness is still being evaluated, said spokeswoman Yaviri Escalera.

But Charlotte-Mecklenburg teachers union President Charlie Smith said the program is voluntary on the part of job candidates and many principals have already disregarded it.

“I guess it creates a profile, and then it ranks the profile,” Smith said, saying that a high TeacherMatch score proves only that “you know how to take a computer profile test.”

Assessment tests have been used in Columbus for decades, so TeacherMatch isn’t really new, said Rhonda Johnson, the president of the Columbus teachers union. If it’s a tool that works better at screening candidates, then it’s a step in the right direction, she said, but it shouldn’t carry too much weight in the decision-making process.

“One tool in and of itself is not enough when you’re talking about hiring a teacher in a classroom,” Johnson said.

Also, Columbus City Schools hope to implement a “mock teaching environment” to study how candidates perform in classroom situations, Stanford said. It’s not clear yet whether the mock classroom will use real children. Officials are “still working on that part of it,” Stanford said.